David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Certainly. More to the point, that statement is also a repudiation of the position taken by Malcolm Turnbull, Julie Bishop and Greg Hunt, which is that anthropogenic climate change is real and we must act on it. It is a repudiation of the negotiations currently being conducted by the government in good faith with Ian Macfarlane on the opposition’s proposed amendments to the bills. It is an open declaration that, even if the government accepts all of the opposition’s amendments and even if Malcolm Turnbull then decides that the bill should be passed, Senator Minchin and his suicide squad in the Senate will continue to oppose it.

It is for these important reasons that the opposition are determined to come into this place and debate asylum seekers rather than debate the other great questions before this country and the Senate. Those opposite not only have become obstructionists to the Rudd Labor government but have become obstructionists to their own opposition leader in the House of Representatives. Those opposite have become a rogue Senate team and Malcolm Turnbull is herding cats rather than leading an opposition. Those opposite in this place are now debating asylum seekers because they are unable to debate any of the other major questions before this parliament. The asylum seeker debate is their substitute for debating the CPRS, the economy, the government’s response to the global financial crisis and a plethora of other important issues. So we must now contend with a rogue Liberal Party Senate team sailing the political seas under their own flag led by Captain No, Senator Minchin, and continuing to obstruct both the government and Malcolm Turnbull in the Senate. Senator Cash has taken on the role of chief incendiarist for the opposition in this campaign of diffusion and obstruction, and I hope she does not have cause in the future to regret the role she has played in this asylum seeker debate.

I would like to go back over the events of the last month and go through, on a factual basis, the events in the matter of the Oceanic Viking and how it pertains to government policy. On 18 October, a call was made to Australian search and rescue authorities indicating that a vessel was in distress in the waters between Australia and Indonesia. The vessel was in the Indonesian search and rescue zone. That means it was Indonesia’s responsibility under the 1979 International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue, to which Indonesia and Australia are both signatories. I quote from that convention:

Parties shall ensure that assistance be provided to any person in distress at sea. They shall do so regardless of the nationality or status of such a person or the circumstances in which that person is found—

and—

… to provide their initial medical or other needs and deliver them to a place of safety.

Upon receiving this call, Australian officials contacted the relevant Indonesian search and rescue maritime authorities. Indonesian officials told Australian officials that they had no vessels in the vicinity and asked if Australia could provide assistance. Since there were no commercial vessels in the area, HMAS Armidale was sent to the vessel in distress. When the Armidale reached the vessel, Royal Australian Navy personnel concluded that it was not able to get to a port under its own power. As a consequence, the 78 people on board were transferred to the Australian Customs vessel MV Oceanic Viking. All this was done at the request of the Indonesian government. The Indonesian search and rescue authorities were the lead agency.

None of this meant that the people on board the vessel in distress became Australia’s legal responsibility. These people were not, and never have been, Australian detainees. They are persons rescued at sea, and our duty to them was to transfer them to a place of safety. The nearest place of safety was the Indonesian port of Merak. The Indonesians, however, told Australia that the facilities at Merak were inadequate to receive the people on the vessel and consequently requested that the Oceanic Viking proceed to the detention centre at Tanjung Pinang in the Riau Islands, and this was done. Since the people on the Oceanic Viking were Indonesia’s responsibility, it was not unreasonable that Indonesia decide where they should be disembarked.

It was at this point that the people on the Oceanic Viking announced that they wanted to come to Australia and that they would not disembark at Tanjung Pinang. The Australian government said from the start that this was not acceptable. These people were not immigration detainees; they were persons who had been rescued at sea. They were not in Australian territory, they were not in Australian waters and they were not in Australian custody. These are all critical points of fact which those opposite have consistently ignored and avoided. These are the facts that give testament to the haranguing language used by those opposite, not to uncover a truth but rather to generate an untruth—that is, irrational fear of immigration.

These persons were not in Australian custody, and our only duty to them was to transfer them to a place of safety, which, of course, we had done. It was at this point that the Liberal Party in the Senate began to crow and chortle and boast about what a terrible pickle the government was in. They began to ask a long string of inane questions, to move MPIs and urgency motions every sitting day and to carry on as though this were the funniest thing that had ever happened. ‘What a good joke it is,’ they said. ‘It is a terrible shambles,’ they said. ‘The government has lost control of Australia’s borders,’ they proclaimed.

But there was one thing that the Liberal and National senators did not say and that they have never said. They have never said, and they are unable to say, what they would do in these same circumstances if they had been in government. Senator Fierravanti-Wells, Senator Bernardi and Senator Cash, in all their impassioned harangues on how totally wrong the government’s response was, never once have even given a hint of what they would have done and of what they thought ought to have happened to the people rescued and placed on the Oceanic Viking. Captain No and his rogue crew sailing the political seas are not in the business of providing policy and are not doing the hard work of providing an alternative government but rather are in the business of sloganeering and avoiding a tough, factually based argument.

This, of course, is a feature of the Liberal and National parties in this place: a strategy of cynical exploitation of the fear of immigrants which they hope is lurking out there in the electorate. It is a strategy of diversion of the parliament’s and the public’s attention from all of the other key issues upon which they remain so hopelessly divided, so bereft of policies and so thoroughly discredited in the eyes of the Australian people. Theirs is a strategy of trying to milk the maximum possible advantage from the difficult and delicate situation which the Australian government was confronted with while all the time dodging questions about what their policy is, what their policy was or what they would have done.

And now we know who the sinister mastermind behind this policy of evasion is. It is not Senator Fierravanti-Wells, whose role is to be the coalition’s attack dog on immigration issues; it is not Senator Minchin, who as we well know is too preoccupied with sabotaging his leader and leading his crew of rogue parliamentarians; and it is not Senator Abetz, whose political reputation was last seen orbiting Pluto—it is not expected to return to earth for many millennia yet, if ever. He is the Baldrick of Blackadder fame, offering you a cunning plan, but unfortunately his gravitas and wisdom do not quite match his imaginings. No, the mastermind is none other than the author of the Pacific Solution, Philip Ruddock. It was Philip Ruddock who told the Liberal and National parties that the best policy to have on asylum seekers in general and the Oceanic Viking in particular was no policy at all. When Ruddock was asked on 23 October on Sky News what he would do about the Oceanic Viking, he replied, ‘I’ve advised all of my colleagues that that’s the question they shouldn’t answer.’

So here we have the Liberals once again giving the game away. Just as Malcolm Turnbull could not resist boasting to Dr Andrew Charlton at the press gallery ball that he had the goods at last on that nasty Prime Minister in the form of that email which Baldrick had given him, Mr Ruddock just could not resist taking credit for this opposition tactic of not saying what they would do about the Oceanic Viking. I do not think those opposite should be allowed to get away with this evasion.

There were, in fact, only three possible alternative courses of action that Australia could have taken in response to the call for help from the Indonesian authorities concerning the vessel found in the Indonesian rescue zone. The first was to leave them to drown. Now perhaps all of those senators opposite who think we should have left 78 people to drown might have the courage to raise their hands—but none of them will. The second option was to bring them directly to Australia or to Christmas Island. Colin Barnett, the Liberal Premier of Western Australia, wanted us to bring them to Perth. Sharman Stone wanted us to bring them to Christmas Island for processing. Obviously neither Colin Barnett nor Sharman Stone had been properly briefed by Philip Ruddock on the Liberal Party’s strategy that the best policy was to have no policy at all. It is also what the Greens and other so-called refugee advocates wanted us to do. So who amongst those senators opposite wants to argue that we should fall in with the Greens and bring all such people directly to Australia? Again, of course, none of them will. The third alternative was to take them straight back to Sri Lanka, presumably by force and return them to the tender care of the Sri Lankan authorities. Is anyone opposite putting their hand up for that approach? Of course not.

Given these three unacceptable solutions, all of which have been flirted with by those opposite but none of which have been adopted by them, the only course of action open to the Australian government was to exercise the maximum degree of patience and to try and persuade the people aboard the Oceanic Viking to disembark. The Indonesians made it clear that they would not accept the use of force, as was their absolute right given that these events were taking place in Indonesian waters and in an Indonesian port. So the only responsible course was the one that the Rudd Labor government followed: to be patient and to wait until the people on the Oceanic Viking accepted that the sensible thing for them to do was to disembark and have their claims to refugee status processed in Indonesia in accordance with the agreement between Australia and Indonesia under the Bali process for regional cooperation on asylum seekers and people smuggling.

We must deal with the silly assertion made by those opposite that the people found on the Oceanic Viking have been given a ‘special deal’ by the Rudd Labor government. There has been no special deal. If the government had accepted the demands of these people, they would now be at Christmas Island, as Premier Barnett had advocated. But we made it clear that we would not be accepting that demand. All we have said to the people on the Oceanic Viking is that, if they disembark, their claims to refugee status will be processed as quickly as possible. Given that some of these people have already been found to be genuine refugees by the UNHCR, that means that they are eligible for resettlement. Australia will accept its fair share of these people, and we expect that other countries will do likewise, as they have consistently done in the past. Those that have not been processed will now be processed as quickly as possible.

It is important to note that this assessment will be done by the UNHCR and not by Australian officials. Australia does not have the power to offer a deal to anyone in Indonesia, and no such deal was offered. Let us be clear about this. No promise was made to any person on the Oceanic Viking that they would be given refugee status if they did not already have it. No promise was made to any person on the Oceanic Viking that they would be settled in Australia even if they were given refugee status. Let me say that again: no promise was made to any person on the Oceanic Viking that they would be settled in Australia even if they do succeed in achieving refugee status. Those are the facts, and what all of these facts have in common is that they are never mentioned by those opposite.

The other thing that all of these facts have in common is that they demonstrate again and again that those opposite are not actually interested in having a debate about our immigration regime. They are not interested in having a debate about how these people should be treated. What they are interested in doing is using inflammatory language, using terms such as ‘queue jumpers’ and ‘holding the vessel to ransom’—these and other absurd notions. And all of those notions are about building the case that our border protection is weak when it is not, and what none of those inflammatory words does is offer us any insight at all into what those opposite would do had they found themselves in government at this time.

Of course, one can well imagine what the answer to that would be. We were offered an insight by Alexander Downer, who recently, when speaking to ABC Radio National, gave us some insight into the mindset of those opposite. He described as successful the sotto voce policy of towing boats back to Indonesia under the Howard government:

… we got the Navy to tow the boats back to the Indonesian territorial waters, left the boats with enough fuel, food and so on to get to a port in Indonesia, guided them to where to go, and then left them.

And then left them. He went on to say that they:

… obviously monitored them to make sure the boat was safe but disappeared over the horizon.

That is the strategy that those opposite commend to this place.

The proposition that the Liberal Party ever offered a secure border protection regime to this country is torn to shreds the moment one looks at the record of TPVs. What we see with temporary protection visas is that they were an abject failure as an instrument. Ninety per cent of persons given temporary protection visas under the Howard government were eventually found to be refugees and settled in Australia. So these great instruments of deterrence that those opposite hark back to were in fact a policy failure. When we came to office we found not only that there was a harsh and inhumane regime in this area but that it was expensive and it was ineffective. There was a white elephant on Christmas Island, built in far greater time and for far more money than it was ever supposed to be, and a TPV regime that was completely failing to serve as a deterrent. That is what those opposite cling to.

Notwithstanding that, those opposite voted for our changes and now heartily deny that they ever did so. Those opposite cling to a regulatory regime which completely failed to protect our borders, to serve as a deterrent or, most importantly, to build and nurture the reputation of this country as one which deals humanely with asylum seekers and deals with them in a manner consistent with our international obligations. Where does this leave us? This leaves us in a debate that those opposite have stripped of fact. It leaves us in a debate where those opposite cling to inflammatory language— (Time expired)